Agility Needs HR, and HR Need Agility

Agile is not just about ceremonies, deployment tactics, technology and tooling – it’s about solid foundations in recruitment, management, career development, communications and an overall alignment to the company’s purpose and values. At the heart of some of these are everybody’s favourite function – HR. To succeed in releasing agility in your organisation your HR teams need to adapt and iterate and move away from business control to people empowerment.

At the same time, the world of HR is being turned upside down as companies look to HR for strategic guidance and insights that can give them a competitive and people advantage. Engagement is a big topic, access to relevant training is table stakes for employees and annual old-school performance reviews are, thankfully, being questioned as to how effective they are. This change is turmoil for some but an opportunity for others. At the heart of those who see this change as an opportunity lies a need to be agile – to release agility – no different to their colleagues in the technical teams.

In this talk, I will discuss how agility requires strong cultural foundations and how Agile and HR go hand-in-hand no matter which department you are in.

After building an incredibly agile team, described by a seasoned agile coach as “frighteningly agile”, and an agile HR team described as “the least evil HR team in the world” (which I believe is a compliment) I have seen agility from both sides and learned many lessons along the way.

In this fun talk, I will describe how to “release agility” in any team by focusing on strong foundations and good communication and how HR plays a huge part in this. I’ll use stories, examples and insights to give you the tools you need to build strong foundations, talk to HR about agility or even bring Agile to your own HR team!